


the last supper.

by outpastthemoat



Series: song of songs [6]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Coda, Episode: s10e18 Book of the Damned, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-17
Updated: 2015-04-17
Packaged: 2018-03-23 11:04:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,768
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3765769
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/outpastthemoat/pseuds/outpastthemoat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“My time is at hand.” - Matthew 26:18</p>
            </blockquote>





	the last supper.

Dean and Sam always stop for dinner, afterward.  After a battle, after a fight, after escaping death; after crying, after breaking glass or fingers or bodies. They order tacos and beers or steaks and beers and talk about what happened, two professionals talking over a job: casual words, small talk, just to process the event.  It’s as necessary as stitching up wounds or washing blood off their hands.  They relive the experience, like it resets the status quo, like it restores the balance.  They sit in the booth of a diner or lean back against the Impala’s front seat with drinks in their hands and fast food balanced on their knees and they close their eyes and take quick, shallow gasps of air like they are still running or stabbing or screaming until the tightness in their chests has passed, until their breaths slow down.  

Dean and Sam always stop to eat, before: before a battle, before a fight, before facing death or opening old wounds, before shaking each other by the shoulders and shouting in each other’s faces. Castiel has heard Dean call them last meals.  Dean always says he doesn’t want to die on an empty stomach.  

\--

Castiel is going to die, Castiel is out of time, Castiel is running on the fumes of another angel’s grace and there are so many thing to do before he dies.  There are so many tasks left unfinished.  He had wanted to save Dean somehow, he had wanted to help the angels find their way home. He still has to atone.

He is no stranger to death, but he finds it strange to be dying this way.  He is going out without sparks or flashes of light, he is dying the way the candles on a chandelier are extinguished: one row at a time, dimming slowly, settling into darkness.  He is still an angel, so he goes on living without the need for breath or water, but at the same time he is dying and there are things he cannot do without.  

Food is not among them yet, not yet, but Dean does not seem to understand. Dean will pass Sam a beer and then offer one to Castiel and Castiel will say No thanks every time.  He never knows why he says it.  He thinks sometimes that he refuses Dean’s beers because he isn’t hungry, isn’t thirsty, he has forgotten what those feelings even mean.  He thinks sometimes it is because this is nothing that he needs, and he has never learned to be greedy in that way; he has never learned to take something just because he wants it.  He has never wanted to take what he doesn’t need.

Fine, Dean will say, and he will tilt the beer to his lips and drink it himself.  Castiel can always tell that he has hurt Dean somehow, every time he says No thanks or Not right now, but he can never understand what he has done.  

\--

He has thought sometimes of saying something to Dean before he dies.  Maybe over a beer, with Dean leaning against a bar and turning his head to smile at Castiel.  Maybe after dinner.  Before a battle.  After a fight.  But there is not enough time, because Castiel is dying, and Dean is fading fast, and they have come so close to saying certain things before, but never close enough to bridge the distance between them. And though Dean still looks at him like there might still be sparks left between them, buried under layers of ash and unsaid words and old grievances, it is nothing that either of them have time for.

Once, not so long ago, Dean had turned his face towards Castiel.  He wrapped his fingers around Castiel’s wrist.

“Don’t go just yet,” he said.  “Me and Sam are going out for dinner. You should come.”

“Maybe next time,” Castiel said, but Dean took him by surprise.  

“What is there isn’t a next time?” Dean asked.  He tightened his fingers around Castiel’s wrist.  “What if--”

but then Dean let go and rolled his shoulders and just said, “Okay, sure.  Next time, then,” and Castiel had nodded as though he agreed, because Dean sounded like he believed it, and that had meant something to him.

\--

Castiel is going to die and he doesn’t know when.  The prospect of death is something he finds he can deal with nicely; it is the uncertainty of its timing that leaves him feeling anxious and rushed.  He finds himself thinking, This could be the last time, every time, about everything he does.  This could be the last time he will hear Sam’s voice over the phone, the last time he will run his fingers down the steering wheel of his car, the last time he will slip on his coat.

He finds that he does need rest. He turns off the interstate when the sun goes down and drives through the strips of civilization haloed with lights, the shops and restaurants with their neon signs, and he pays for a three-star hotel room because he’s thinking in terms of last times, this is the last time, so why not rest on soft clean sheets for once, why not, but he doesn’t know that this is the last time for certain.  If he makes it through another day he’ll pull off the exit ramp once again, find another hotel, pay for another night, and when he turns his credit card over to the concierge he will think This is the last time once again.

He is by himself.  He has been by himself for three hundred miles now, and he doesn’t need food, but he is thinking that food would be nice. He thinks about food the way he has to consider the last-chance signs that show up on the empty highways he travels these days: Last chance to stop, Last gas for forty miles.  He orders room service.  He orders a roast beef sandwich and soup and a wine and cheese platter for two and he waits by the door until the server arrives thirty-six minutes later, carrying his last meal, and Castiel tips him well, but the server doesn’t linger, and he is left with a plate of food and a bottle of red wine and two wine glasses.

He thinks, I am going to die alone, which isn’t so bad.  Everyone dies alone, after all, no matter who they might be with.  He thinks, Dean will die alone, and he pours red wine into a single glass and swirls it around and he is thinking those last time, last chance thoughts again.  He is thinking that it would be nice to have someone to share his supper with.  He would like to not be alone.  He is thinking of the beer Dean had offered.  Now he wants the chance to do it over again. He wants to have the chance to reach out and take the bottle from Dean’s hands and hold it up to his mouth, to have the chance to see Dean smiling at him as though he’s done something right and good, something Dean could love him for.  He wants and wants and he doesn’t know why.

\--

Dean comes back with pizza and beer and Castiel is thinking all over again, Last chance, last chance.  But Dean does not offer him a beer.  Dean does not offer him pizza.  Of course he doesn’t: Castiel has made it clear that this is not something he needs.

Dean stops him before he leaves the bunker.  He slips his hand around the crook of Castiel’s elbow, holds him there in the doorway.  There is something Dean wants, Castiel can feel it all over.  He thinks it feels very much like what he himself has been wanting and not asking for.  

Dean gives him a smile, but it’s crooked and sad.  “Next time,” Dean says.  He says those words, and Castiel looks him in the eyes, but he can’t tell if that’s what Dean really believes.  Those are last-chance, last-time words, the kind that Castiel knows all about.  

In this moment, Castiel is remember how it feels to be dying.  As though you are a half-step out of sync with the living breathing world, as though you are already fading away even though you are still drawing breath.  How there is the weight of all those unsaid things pressing down on your shoulders, but there is not enough time to say them all, or make the words say what you mean.   “There won’t be a next time,” Castiel says.  “You already know.”

“No,” Dean agrees.  “There won’t be a next time.”   Not harsh, not desperate, but matter-of-fact: Castiel is going to live. Dean is going to die and Castiel does not know when, only that it has been happening in slow shifts and sudden fast phases, sneaking up from somewhere far behind them and then picking up speed.  Dean is going to die even if his body lives on, and Castiel is going to survive, and he is finding that what he could live with while he was dying is nothing like what he needs to be able to live.

“It might be easier,” Dean says slowly, “if you go.  Before.”  

Castiel is not dying, but his head and his heart are still holding on to those dying-man thoughts about last times, last chances.  This could be the last time Dean will stand by the door and say goodbye without actually saying those words.  This could be the last time Dean will look at him this way, the last time Dean will let his fingers linger on Castiel’s arm.  

Castiel could say I love you, but it’s too late or too soon for that. He could kiss Dean on the cheek and betray them both, and in his heart he believes that Dean would close his eyes and tilt back his head and let him.

So he won’t.

But he could take this one small thing, before their time runs out.  

“I’ll see you soon?” Dean asks quietly, and Castiel understands that Dean will never ask for it either.  Neither of them have learned the secret of reaching out to take what they want, and now it seems that it’s too late to learn.

Castiel says, “I’d like to stay for dinner,” and Dean snatches up those words like a starving man.   Dean closes his eyes, lets his hands grab onto the fabric of Castiel's coat like it's his last chance to hold on.  

“Yeah,” Dean says.  “Yeah. Let me get you a beer.”


End file.
